Four Months
Oh boy. The babies are demonstrating an unfortunate habit of being brutally difficult on their monthly birthdays. Either that or I have a habit of being particularly emotionally vulnerable on those days. Perhaps I build up so much expectation around those milestones that when they don’t wake up on those days making me breakfast in bed, I’m bitterly disappointed and handle the whole day poorly.
Anyway, yesterday was a rough day. It happened to be my birthday, and I would say it was marginally worse than last year’s birthday, which was spent at a funeral in New Jersey followed by an early dinner at an Applebee’s off I-95 in Connecticut. This year was about as much fun as the funeral, but there were no cheeseburger sliders afterward.
I thought about waiting a few days until I was in a slightly more peppy place before writing the four-month post, but I’ve done that every month, and this time I just want to get it out there and not have it hanging over me (the post). Besides, while I know that our visitors come here for the cute pictures and the happy stuff, I figure you can all handle a little bit of the reality that more often than not, those little cherubs are kicking my ass. I know that I’m dealing with some mild postpartum depression, and I am doing everything I can to keep my lowest moments at bay; in my heart, though, I know that the only thing that’s really going to help is time. So now I’ll just start focusing on the slow march to the five-month mark, when things are sure to get better, right?
Eesh, now that I’ve started with a total downer, the positive stuff I’m about to put up here is going to sound disingenuous. And it really shouldn’t, because the good stuff really is good. But I was chatting with another twin mom recently about how hard it can be as a parent to go to other people’s blogs and see all this sunshine and adorability and to feel as though you must be the only person who sometimes (or regularly) feels less than rosy about the whole experience. So just read the above as an attempt at making this blog fair and balanced. Consider it the token Democrat on Fox News. Now on to the happy! (Hmm, this analogy makes it sound as though I’m equating “happy” and “Republican.” Purely an accident.)
The first half of this month was actually really good. The babies became far more interactive and really interested in the world. They also seemed to fall into a bit of a routine during the day, eating at 3-hour intervals and napping somewhat regularly. It was a huge relief to have some structure and predictability in our days. Unfortunately, the second half of the month saw all that go right out the window, and it now seems that the babies are so fascinated by the world that they have very little interest in sleeping, lest they miss anything good. Eloise has been refusing to nap, ever, and while Julian is still a fairly good sleeper, oftentimes I hear him at night through the baby monitor grunting for an hour straight, and when I go in he’s repeatedly kicking his legs up and to the side in his swaddling blanket, mimicking the motions he made when he rolled over (!) from back to front last week (a feat he repeated three times that night but not since). These grunts wake Eloise, of course, and the less said about that the better. Their lack of sleep not only means we get less sleep at night and fewer breaks during the day, but it also makes them exhausted crankypants. Which makes us exhausted crankypants.
Still, their interest in the world is welcome and lots of fun. There are now lots of big “hey, I know you!” smiles when we come into their field of view, which can go a long way toward mitigating the challenges of the day. They are starting to reach and grab, which means they often have fistfuls of my hair, delightfully. Julian lies on the playmat and flings both his arms out at once, trying to hit as many hanging toys at a time as possible, and Eloise is adoring the tags on her Taggie blanket. They are also vocalizing a lot more. Julian does lots of classic coos alternated with a noise that sounds just like radio static, so when he’s “talking” to us it sounds like we’re getting bad reception on the baby talk station. Eloise, who has always been less chatty than Julian, now makes a lot more noise, but she pretty much only says “Aah, ahh” (the A sound in “cat,” as opposed to “car”). It’s pretty cute.
My favorite development this month by far was that they started noticing each other. It happened quickly. For a while one or the other would occasionally gaze with studied interest at his or her twin, but they did that with the cats, too, so it wasn’t particularly meaningful. But then all of a sudden both of them at the same time seemed to realize that the other existed. Matt and I were sitting next to each other on the couch about two weeks ago, each holding one, and before we knew it they had locked eyes and were smiling and cooing at each other. This lasted several minutes, and since then we have been able to reproduce this just by pointing them at each other. (And we do that a lot, it’s so cute.) Sometimes they’ll even catch eyes and start smiling at each other without prompting from us, which is a treat. This gives me hope that very soon they’ll be great playmates and let me return to my life of heavy drinking and trashy magazines. In seriousness, I’m looking forward to being able to sit them both in Bumbo seats, facing toward each other, and letting them entertain each other for, oh, minutes on end.
I’ll end with a quick nod to another recent anniversary: they day before their four-month birthday (February 18) was their “conceptoversary” — one year after they were conceived. (We know this for sure because we conceived with the help of fertility science, so those of you who would prefer to believe that Matt’s and my love is a chaste love may go on doing so.) It is odd to think about this period last year. I wanted so badly to be pregnant, and I was but didn’t know it yet. I look at pictures from my last birthday and can’t believe that I was already hosting the two little balls of cells that would become Julian and Eloise. I could probably say something insightful and profound about that if I weren’t so sleep deprived. I’ll just stick with the uninsightful and obvious: What a year it has been.
Filed under Monthly Updates | Tags: eloise, julian, language, monthly, Parenting, scheduling, sleep | Comments (10)
Fitted Diapers
(Be sure to check out parts 1 and 2!)
So, if I manage to keep the time between cloth diaper posts to a month, that’s not too pathetic, right? Right? Eesh.
Fitted diapers, as the name implies, are fitted: they’re shaped like a diaper, they have elastic around the legs, and they have a built-in fastening mechanism. We have two different brands, which are rather different in style: Thirsties and Kissaluvs.
The Thirsties are made out some kind of soft micro-fleece that is supposed to wick moisture away from the skin, with a more absorbent internal cloth part. They fasten with Velcro tabs, and come in a host of shiny colors.
The Kissaluvs are made of a terry-like cotton, which doesn’t have the “wicking” feature but which Rachel thinks is a little more absorbent than the Thirsties. They fasten with snaps, and come in a few colors, but not the same rainbow of fruit flavors that the Thirsties offer.
Neither is waterproof, so in either case we pair the diaper with a waterproof diaper cover.
I’d have to say that the fitted diapers are my favorite style of cloth diaper. They’re incredibly easy to put on and take off, and the fit is less bulky than the prefolds. Of the two, I slightly prefer the Thirsties because I prefer Velcro to snaps: snaps are probably less likely to wear out over time, but Velcro provides more flexible sizing options, since you can only snap where there’s a snap, but Velcro works over the length of the tab. I admit that I am also, like a hummingbird or a small child, attracted to bright colors.
(With the Velcro tabs on the Thirsties fitted diapers or the covers, it’s important to fasten the tab down to the adjacent laundry tab before washing. That way, you don’t have free-floating Velcro that will pick up lint in the wash, or end up mating with all of your other diapers to form a giant Velcro mass.)
So, if fitted diapers are my favorite, why would we use prefolds at all? A few reasons: First, the fitted diapers are considerably more expensive per diaper—about $12-15 compared to around $2 for a prefold. The fitted diapers are also less absorbent than a prefold, which in practice means somewhat more frequent diaper changes. The micro-fleece fabric is also a bit more finicky than the plain cotton of a prefold: some diaper creams may end up coating the fabric in a way that negatively affects their performance.
In the following extremely dorky (and too-quiet) video, I demonstrate the use of both kinds of fitted diaper:
Filed under Baby Stuff | Tags: cloth, diapers, gear | Comments (2)